manner,—was yet compelled to be candid there. I well remember his words; "Son père avait logé à Potzdam dans une vilaine maison: il en fait un palais. Ses soins se tournèrent à embellir la ville de Berlin, à faire venir des artistes en tout genre; car il voulait aller à la gloire par tous les chemins. . . . . Les choses changeaient à vue d'œil. Lacédémone devenait Athènes. Des déserts furent défrichés: cent trois villages furent formés dans des déserts desséchés." Thus we see

The desert smil'd,

And Paradise was open'd in the wild.

The benefits, the blessings, thence derived to the nation are sufficiently obvious. Here, I conceive, is to be seen the monarch's true and real glory. But warlike ambition is common enough with the youthful prince; your majesty must pardon me, then, if, in contemplating your military character, I exclaim with Montesquieu, in his view of the conquests of Alexander,-feeling the application to be just,-" What a soldier! what a conqueror! living, he is admired; dead, he is lamented by the people he has subdued!"

Fred. I am glad to find it the opinion, as well of yourself as of others, that virtue may, sometimes, be discovered in the man who is in pursuit of military glory;-a fleeting unsubstantial good, indeed, when virtue is not the prompter; for, like the disembodied spirit, it soon flits," as the poet expresses it, "into air; into thin air!"

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Mac. Such are the honourable sentiments of your majesty's disembodied spirit. You had, however, other ideas when on earth, and when engaged in the "filthy fray;" except, indeed, at the time of writing the AntiMachiavel, while you were Prince of Prussia, and when the brilliancy of conquest was wholly unknown to you. Fred. You would then insinuate that I was not always guided by a love of virtue.

Mac. I mean, at this time, merely to represent to

you, that you practised not, on every occasion, according to your precepts: and that, on the demise of your father, you were dazzled by the splendour of your situation as a powerful king. Montesquieu, who, in speaking of my work, has done me the honour to style me "Ce grand homme Machiavel," is precisely of the same opinion as myself, with respect to the necessity of dissimulation in the kingly character,-(perfidy and oppression we equally detest.) In describing a monarchy, and of honour which appertains to it, he has the following words. "It allows of cunning and craft, when joined with the idea of greatness of soul or importance of affairs: as, for instance, in politics, with whose finesses it is far from being offended." Fred. Well, then, I must own I had occasionally some compunctious visitings of nature" in my search after glory-glory, I must say; for so, without ascending to principles, the meteor which floats and glitters around the head of the warrior will ever be styled by mistaken It is with the soldier as with the inamorato,

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man.

When success a lover's toils attends,

Few ask if fraud or force attain'd his ends.-POPE.

Mac. Your majesty was born a soldier: you were not compelled to assume the character, as has been the case with others, by any circumstances whatever, which might affect the safety of your dominions. When you first took up arms, the neighbouring powers were in a peaceful state. I may now without hesitation observe, that you used very flimsy pretences for the war you engaged in against the empress-queen.

Fred. But how does this agree with your original assertion, that I might be considered as a pattern for the warrior and the king?

Mac. When I commended you in the character of king, it was in allusion to the civil arrangements of the state. When I spoke of you as a consummate general, it was from the brilliancy and rapidity of your victories. The motives which might lead you to unsheath the

sword are entirely out of the question, and wholly abstracted from your military skill.

Fred. The motives were, for the most part, ambition and interest. I may frankly confess them now.

...

Mac. You acknowledge them to be your instigators at the commencement of your wars, or Voltaire has foully misrepresented you. He asserts that you actually committed to paper the following declaration, and which, he adds, is faithfully transcribed by him. "Mon épargne bien remplie et la vivacité de mon caractère étaient la raison que j'avais de faire la guerre à Marie Térèse, Reine de Bohème et de Hongrie. . . . . Enfin l'ambition, l'intérêt, et le désir de faire parler de moi, l'emportèrent, et la guerre fut résolue." A very candid, but certainly a very singular acknowledgment for a monarch; it is, in fact, proclaiming yourself an oppressor. The wardeclarations of kings are conceived in a totally different strain; as, "All the world knows that the moderation of his majesty," &c. or words to the same effect; and this is followed by an enumeration of the injuries and insults, real or imaginary, which he may have received, and which must justify him in taking up arms. But you will answer that this was only your closet confession, and not intended for the public eye. True; but still your injustice is equally manifest; for, in either case, the consequent odium will rest on your name.

Fred. The declaration said to be transcribed by Voltaire is an absolute forgery. Whatever ambitious views I may have had in some of my wars, it was not the case with that to which you allude; and this will appear by the manifesto I published at the time.

Mac. The liveliness of Voltaire's manner has always gained him a number of admirers. The ridicule he was pleased to throw on your majesty somewhat injured you in the world's opinion: since your residence in the Elysian fields, however, ample justice has been done to your character on earth. The aspersions of malice, the satirical traits of envy, which so often alarmed you, are

now little attended to; they are mostly consigned to the pit of oblivion.

Fred. Voltaire, indeed, has shown himself particularly malicious in his representations of me. Like to many men of letters who have been honoured with the notice of princes, he never thought himself sufficiently rewarded. He affected to slight me as a king, in the same manner as Cato is reported to have slighted Eumenes, king of Pergamus, on his coming to Rome.

Mac. The philosopher of Ferney possessed not the virtues of the Roman Censor. When it was asked of Cato, "Why do you thus shun Eumenes, who is so good a king, and so great a friend to the Romans?" he replied, "Eumenes may be a good king, but I know very well, that the animal called a king is a man-eater; nor is there one among the most renowned of them all that can be compared with Epaminondas, Pericles, Themistocles, or others whom I could name." And this he observed of these men, because virtue was known to have been the impeller, the first mover, in almost every action of their lives. But Voltaire had none of the rigidness and austereness of the ancients, and which were founded in moral goodness; his pretended scorn and contempt of royalty originated entirely in his pride, in his literary ambition. In his own imagination, his abilities placed him high above those who were styled his peers; higher, indeed, than the most illustrious potentate on earth. He seemed ready to exclaim, in the language of Shakspeare" Here I sit, let kings come bow to me." Thus, I say, did he conceive of himself, and before any particular incense had been offered to him. But, when your majesty had exalted him into a god, reason, which till then had served to counterbalance arrogance, evaporated quickly; the scale flew up and "kicked the beam."

Fred. He yet was evidently pleased and gratified by the appointments he for some time held at my court, however unequal he might think them to his merits.

The golden key, the cross of distinction and honour, with which I invested him, had charms for even the haughty and philosophical mind.

Mac. But this, you should recollect, was in the infancy of his genius; there is something very dazzling in a royal throne. He must be of a highly philosophical temper, indeed, who can look with steadiness, and at the same time with indifference, on its splendour. Still, however, the passions and affections of Voltaire might have remained in a great measure like those of other men, had not your majesty, as I have just observed, unluckily erected him into a divinity. The Stoics themselves, when bestowing titles on their wise, their great, and supereminent men, were not more extravagant. What were keys and crosses, salaries and appointments, in the estimation of a divinity? This your deification of him, as I heard a candid Frenchman observe, achevait de le perdre. Ever after, indeed, he assumed a more than mortal bearing; and as Pindar, in his poetical raptures, talked of his head reaching the skies; so Voltaire, in his philosophical reveries, believed the same to be the case with himself.

Fred. You know him well; but allow me to finish the portrait:-then anticipating the earthly glories attendant on his apotheosis, (for such he no doubt expected should take place in form at his decease,) he from his imaginary empyreum

Looks down to pity kings;*

while, in his conceit," the little stars," on the appearance of such a luminary as himself, must immediately "hide their diminished heads."

Mac. The apocolocynthisis,† as Seneca terms it, of the emperor Claudius, would, perhaps, be sooner adopted than the consecration you mention. But let me for a moment compare this celebrated moralist with yourself; the Roman philosopher preaches forgiveness, but "And the free soul looks down to pity kings."-ESS. ON MAN. + Mock deification.